Lyon & Turnbull
Lot 96
Louis Wain (British 1860-1939) Hockey, circa 1904signed (lower left), pen, ink, watercolour, gouache and pencil on wove paper on Artist's prepared board42cm x 71.5cm (16 1/2in x 28 1/8in) For the Love of Cats: Works by Louis Wain "He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves."H.G. Wells, 1925 In turn of the century Britain, the illustrations of Louis Wain were virtually inescapable. His world of anthropomorphised cats was so popular that there was demand for an annual, which ran from 1902 until 1921. He wrote and illustrated over 100 children’s books over the course of his lifetime. Wain was additionally a recognised expert on the domestic cat and was elected president and chairman of the National Cat Club.As well as being thoroughly charming and skilfully executed, collectors are enthralled by the fact Wain’s art seems to deeply channel the eccentricities of the man himself. His life story is a bizarre and, in many ways, tragic one. It is perhaps unsurprising that it was recently dramatized on the big screen in ‘The Electrical Life of Louis Wain’ (2021), starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Wain.When his father died in 1880 Wain became the sole provider for his mother and five sisters. He was then tragically widowed after just three years of marriage in 1887. He and his remaining family lived together in Kent for much of his adult life. Despite his great success as an illustrator over several decades, money was always short, spread across the large household. He was unable to secure much by way of copyright income and so did not receive royalties when his images were later widely reproduced. This subsequently led to the straitened circumstances he lived in when his health later failed.After a three-year period living and working in New York, Wain returned to the family fold in 1910. Despite having been the creator of such ubiquitous imagery for so long, by 1917 demand for his work fell away. Sadly, Wain was committed to a pauper’s asylum in South London in 1924, having been certified insane by his sisters. It has been speculated that he suffered from schizophrenia, though issues may also have been triggered by a serious head injury sustained after falling from an omnibus in 1914. Wain would spend the final 15 years of his life in hospital.When it was discovered what had become of him, a fund was set up to raise money for him and his family. Ramsey MacDonald, the prime minister at the time, even arranged pensions for Wain’s sisters in recognition to of their brother’s contribution to the arts. Wain himself was subsequently able to move to more comfortable housing in Bethlem hospital.Wain continued working throughout his final years, famously producing fascinatingly intricate and esoteric images of cats in bright colours and swirling patterns. They have been viewed as precursors to ‘psychedelic art’, and indeed were unlike anything else of the period: spectacular and peculiar in equal measure.The works offered here are from the peak of this unique artist’s career and are amongst some of the finest examples to have appeared on the market for some years. ‘Hockey’, c.1904, depicts a ferociously competitive cat hockey match with the viewer plunged into the thick of the action. It is one of Wain’s most recognisable and popular images, having been one of the most widely published postcards of 1904-05. ‘To Be Let Unfurnished’ is another fantastic example of Wain’s talent as a world builder: each cat has a sense of its own character, its individual plotline unfolding. The attention to detail is so involved, the characterisation so well observed, it is easy to see why the nation took his imagery to their hearts, and why his cause was taken up so generously when news of his sad fate reached society’s ears. Both works have been in the same family’s collection since at least as early as 1915, and it is with great pleasure that Lyon & Turnbull present them to the market now, having been unseen by the general public for over 100 years.
